Compilation of information on "Strategic Investment" newsletter

by Stephen Hewitt, May 2006

Introduction

The newsletter "Strategic Investment" is a share tip-sheet, published from the USA, and with pretensions
to be something grander, as its name perhaps implies. And it is not difficult to find
evidence of an agenda which goes beyond the stated one of investment.

In 2002 Strategic Investment described one of its writers, Jack Wheeler, as follows: "As a veteran of six anti-Communist guerrilla conflicts,
he's credited by many insiders for inspiring the "Reagan Doctrine" that supported freedom fighters.'

Some subscribers might have been surprised to find that they have paid to be subjected to what can at best be described as political propaganda.

For example, in the issue dated 1 March 2003, with the USA about to launch its war of aggression against
Iraq, Daniel Denning, the editor, was writing things such as this:

"It's not Iraq's ability to project power as a nation-state that worries us. It's Iraq's membership in the
vast network of global terror. More proof of this is
likely to emerge in the coming weeks. But I, for one,
am convinced of it logically."..."And so imagine a nuclear Iraq that could say to
the rest of the Muslim world: give me your Jew-hating,
anti-American, violent and desperate young
men, come to my borders, train in my terror camps
under my nuclear umbrella, take my weapons of
mass destruction with you, and destroy the West.
This is the scenario U.S. policymakers are trying to prevent."

In a different article in the same issue, the "veteran of six anti-Communist guerrilla conflicts",
Jack Wheeler wrote:

"America is breathtakingly lucky to have a president who is fully aware of what is at stake
now for our country and for all Western civilization."

The Fleet Street Letter is an English tip sheet,
which is now owned by the
same company that owns Strategic Investment.
Interestingly, in 1987 a reviewer
wrote: "The 'news and views' section seems to be something
of an editorial self-indulgence - pontificating on by-election results is arguably a bit out of place
in a tipsheet for which subscribers pay 50p per page."
Nils Blythe, "Your Guide to the share tipsters", Investors Chronicle vol80/1015, 15-21 May 1987

This dossier
is a compilation of information about Strategic Investment and associated individuals and companies.
There is no attempt made here to draw any conclusions (yet), but simply to collate information.

Information from a printed copy of the newsletter

One well-known method for unscrupulous proprietors or associates of tip-sheets to make money at
their subscribers expense works as follows. The tipsters or their associates buy some random share.
Some time later the tip-sheet advises its subscribers to buy this
share on some pretext or another. If there are enough subscribers their combined buying actions can
move the price up. The tipsters can use this price movement as evidence of how good their tip was,
creating a bubble
effect. They can also use the higher price as an opportunity to sell their shares at a profit.
Of course there are many possible variations on this basic idea.
To avoid this possibility, you might expect that a reputable tip-sheet at least would have a policy of
not trading in the shares that it wrote about. So what is the policy of Strategic Investment?
Well it's quite clear. The following is from Strategic Investment's small print (which
is reproduced in full below):
"London-Washington Publications Ltd., its officers and
owners, and the contributors to Strategic Investment may, from time
to time, have positions in investments referred to herein."

Incidentally, at the time of writing, there is no company called "London-Washington Publications"
registered in England and Wales.

This is the small print at the bottom of page 2 of a printed copy of Strategic Investment
as received in 2003 through the post by subscribers in Britain:

Printed newsletters from 2002 and 2003 have the web address www.strategicinvestment.com as part of the
title banner on the front page.

Information from "The Great Reckoning"

The "Hon. Lord Rees-Mogg" in the text above is William Rees-Mogg, the former editor of the Times.
Another name connected with Strategic Investment, which does not appear in the newsletter
quoted above, is James Dale Davidson. William Rees-Mogg and James Dale Davidson
co-authored a book "Blood in the Streets: investment profits in a world gone mad".
Later they wrote another book together - "The Great Reckoning" - on the dust jacket of which is written:

James Dale Davidson and Lord Rees-Mogg edit and
publish Strategic Investment, one of the world's
best-performing investment newsletters. Davidson
is founder and chairman of the American National
Taxpayers Union. He has written for the Wall Street
Journal and numerous other national publications
and is a principal of Strategic Advisors Corporation
in Baltimore, Maryland. He is co-author of Blood in
the Streets: Investment Profits in a World Gone Mad.
Lord Rees-Mogg was Assistant Editor of the
Financial Times in the 1950s and is an investment
adviser. He was formerly editor of The Times and is
Chairman of the Broadcasting Standards Council.
In addition to co-authoring Blood in the Streets, he
is the author of The Reigning Error: The Crisis of
World Inflation.

"The Great Reckoning How the world will change in the depression
of the 1990s", James Dale Davidson & William Rees-Mogg, revised edition 1993, Sidgwick and Jackson,
a division of Pan Macmillan.

Acknowledgements in "The Great Reckoning"

There are two pages under the heading "ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS"; extracted here
are the names that are mentioned.

We had other
help and more tangible encouragement from our friends and colleagues; our
agent, Theron Raines; and the good people at Simon & Schuster: Dominick
Anfuso, Cassie Jones, Carolyn Reidy and Jack McKeown."

page v, "The Great Reckoning", James Dale Davidson & William Rees-Mogg, 1993, Sidgwick and Jackson

By the way, at the bottom of the first page Davidson and Rees-Mogg write, for no discernible reason:

It is now deemed to be retrograde in some circles to uphold the contributions
of great thinkers who happened to be European or white males. The current
narrow-mindedness is unfortunate and counterproductive-but it unhappily
arises from profound causes.

page vii, "The Great Reckoning", James Dale Davidson & William Rees-Mogg, 1993, Sidgwick and Jackson.

Appendix 6 of "The Great Reckoning"

Appendix 6 of this book is an advertisement.
Titled "STRATEGIC INVESTMENT AND OTHER SERVICES FROM
JAMES DALE DAVIDSON AND LORD REES-MOGG", it starts:

IF YOU enjoyed this book, you may enjoy reading Strategic investment, the private
financial advisory service edited by James Dale Davidson and Lord Rees-Mogg.

The track record of the specific recommendations has been superlative. Steve Newby,
who picks Strategic Investment's Undiscovered Values, was a three-time winner of the
USA Today/Financial News Network Investment Challenge in 1990 and 1991. He
turned $500,000 into $1,498,763 in just twelve weeks. Strategic Investment also offers
monthly advice about ways to profit from geopolitical developments.

page 555, "The Great Reckoning How the world will change in the depression
of the 1990s", James Dale Davidson & William Rees-Mogg, 1993, Sidgwick and Jackson.

There then follow some paragraphs boasting of past predictions supposedly made by Strategic
Investment. For example:

Strategic investment analyzed the pending fall of the Berlin Wall in February 1989,
ten months before the bulldozers actually started their work. Years before the banking
crisis, the S & L bankruptcies, and the real estate bust became news, Strategic Investment
told readers what to expect. Among other Strategic investment bull's-eyes: the collapse
of oil prices in 1986, the 1987 stock market plunge, the meltdown in Tokyo (the
Nikkei Dow put warrants we recommended gained 324%), the rapid rout of Iraq in
the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and the death of the Soviet Union.

page 555, "The Great Reckoning", James Dale Davidson & William Rees-Mogg, 1993, Sidgwick and Jackson.

On the next page, they invited readers to send their order for a 6 month trial subscription
"for just $60 (in Canada and elsewhere - $75)" to "Strategic Investment, P.O. Box 2291,
Washington, D.C. 20013-2291." The also wrote:

page 556, "The Great Reckoning", James Dale Davidson & William Rees-Mogg, 1993, Sidgwick and Jackson.

Other services they were selling were introduced: "Davidson and Rees-Mogg have launched a new
service to report on investment
opportunities in the new emerging area of growth, Southern China and nearby regions
of the Pacific rim." Readers were invited to send $60 to the same Washington P.O. box for a six month
trial subscription to "Asian Growth". And similarly: "If you are interested in
information on operating a business from home, Home, Inc.
is a monthly newsletter with many practical tips. An introductory one-year subscription
is available for $29 from Home, Inc., P.O. Box 2291, Washington, D.C. 20013-
2291."

Finally they wrote:

James Dale Davidson and Lord Rees-Mogg also offer private consultation to
corporations and individuals and are principals in a money-management firm specializing
in hedging and capital preservation. For more details, contact Davidson and Rees-
Mogg at P.O. Box 2291, Washington, D.C. 20013-2291, or 17 Pall Mall, London,
England SW1Y 5NB.

page 556, "The Great Reckoning", James Dale Davidson & William Rees-Mogg, 1993, Sidgwick and Jackson.

Information from company websites

As at January 2006, the website www.agora-inc.com is evidently the website of Agora Inc, the publisher
of Strategic Investment. We know this,
because the page www.agora-inc.com/index.html has the heading "Hello & Welcome To Agora, Inc."
This page also tells us that the "President and founder" is William Bonner. The page
www.agora-inc.com/history.html gives some more snippets of information about Agora Inc., amongst
other things, it was started in 1979 "outside Washington D.C.".

This website lists many related companies. It's not explicitly stated that they are owned by Agora Inc., but
that is the implication.

People associated with "Strategic Investment"

Printed on a Strategic Investment glossy cardboard "Welcome" folder,
posted to new subscribers in 2002, was an introduction
to "the finest investment team ever assembled". The names listed were:

Rees-Mogg - amongst other things, described as a
"a trusted adviser to some of the wealthiest families in Europe, a confidant of Margaret Thatcher,
and a co-founder of Strategic Investment."

Bill Bonner - the folder seems a little coy about Bonner's history, with the only definite activity
mentioned being "Bill Bonner has been delivering
hard-hitting contrarian analysis of the stock market every day for over two years running." For a
man over fifty years old, that doesn't seem to be telling us much. It also makes the vague
assertion "He's one of the most successful entrepreneurs
and newsletter pulishers [sic] in America today".

Dr. Marc Faber - "Born and educated in Switzerland, Dr. Faber began his investment career on Wall Street
but has been stationed in the Far East since 1973. He also headed the Hong Kong office of
one of the world's largest investment banking firms, Drexel Burnham Lambert, during its heyday
from 1973 to 1990"

Dr. Jack Wheeler - 'He personally discovered three tribes never before contacted by civilization
and has sky dived at the North Pole. As a veteran of six anti-Communist guerrilla conflicts,
he's credited by many insiders for inspiring the "Reagan Doctrine" that supported freedom fighters.'

David Tice .."is the founder and director of David W. Tice & Associates, a capital
management firm in Dallas, Texas."

Dan Denning - the editor.

An advertisement with a similar list of names, and with similar details to those printed on the folder
is still (at the time of writing, May 2006) on the web
http://www.isecureonline.com/Reports/DRI/SteerClear/HOME.CFM?PAGE=2&PCODE=WDRIC514&ALIAS=BITS2
At the time of writing, these details (and in fact the entire contents of
the web page) are identical to a page that was on the web in 2002.
Note that this web page is is not on the website of Agora Inc., but you can authenticate it by starting
from a web page that is on Agora's website, namely
http://www.agora-inc.com/reports/DRI/SteerClear/ which will redirect your browser to a page on
www.isecureonline.com

This web advert contains one name that wasn't mentioned on the folder - Eric J. Fry.
And of him, Agora's advertisement says: "Eric's specialized in international equities since the early 1980s.
For 10 years, he was a professional portfolio manager.
He's also editor of grantsinvestor.com -- an online investment publication --
and the author of the first comprehensive guide to American Depositary Receipts,
International Investing with ADRs".

The web advert also adds that Wheeler is in the Guinness book of records for his sky diving at the
North pole. It also adds that Rees-Mogg is a
"director of the Private Bank of London" and that he co-founded Strategic Investment in 1984.

James Dale Davidson is mentioned on this page on the Agora website
http://www.agora-inc.com/aws/home.cfm?code=19 which includes the words (at the time of writing, May 2006):
"You'll also hear from Strategic Investment founder James Dale Davidson;"...

The Fleet Street Letter and other tipsheets in England

The Investors Chronicle article cited above tells a little of the history of a tipsheet published in England,
called "The Fleet Street Letter":

The tipsheets are not bad at making
money for themselves either. Consider
the story of Nigel Wray, King of the tipsheets.
On 1976 - backed by Clubman's Club founders, Bob Tanner and Peter Whitfield - he bought
the Fleet Street Letter, a tipsheet which had been around since well before he was born.
In its first year under his editorship, turnover was a modest £17,000. But by '81 he had
built up subs and profit sufficiently to bring
The Fleet Street Letter plc to the USM. In 1983 Michael and David Green's
Carlton Studios reversed into it, to form Carlton Communications.

In November 1985 the tipsheet business - with Wray still at the helm - was
sold to the acquisitive Barham Group for £12.3m. In the year to 31 January 1987
Fleet Street Publications made a profit of over £1.9m on a turnover of about £4.5m.
Wray remains a non-executive director of Carlton, with 1m shares (current price
over £13 each). He is an executive director of Barham, with 1/2m shares (currently
185p) and a non-executive director of UTC (stockbrokers, corporate financiers
and makers of Slush Puppies). His latest vehicle is
property company, Gilbert House, in which he holds over 12m shares (current price 103p).
That is not a bad little portfolio for a man who started with a few thousand pounds ten years ago.

This article gave the address of the Fleet Street Letter as 3 Fleet Street, London EC4Y 1AU
and mentioned that the masthead of the tipsheet said "Established 48 years".
This date is roughly consistent with what is on the Agora website at the time of writing
(May 2006)
at http://www.agora-inc.com/brochure/15.html
"Founded in 1938, The Fleet Street Letter is the oldest investment newsletter in Britain."

The Investors Chronicle article also listed other guides published monthly by Fleet Street Letter
at the same address. These were "The New Issue Share Guide", "Unit Trust Letter",
"USM Share Guide", "Amateur Chartist", "Venture Opinion" and "The Penny Share Guide".
Penny Share Guide is listed as a title on Agora's website at
http://www.agora-inc.com/brochure/15.html.
Back in 1987, Nils Blythe wrote of it: "Founded over 9 years ago by John Gommes
(now of the rival of Penny Share Focus)
it was bought by Carlton Communications in March 1983 and in now part of the same stable as Fleet
Street Letter and many others. Edited by John Snowden"...

Of these, Stockmarket Confidential is now listed as a title on Agora Inc's website.
The 1987 article stated: "Previously known by a variety of names - Yours financially,
for example - it assumed its present guise in 1982. Now published by Stonehart Publications together
with Unit Trust Selector and Money Power."
The name Stonehart also appears on Agora's website: "Stonehart Direct Marketing
Services is the list-broker arm of Fleet Street Publications."
(http://www.agora-inc.com/brochure/14.html, May 2006)

As for circulation figures:

No audited figures are available but, in addition to the phenomenal success
of Penny Share Guide, John Snowden of Fleet Street Publications claims 16,000-19,000 for
Fleet Street Letter and fractionally more for New Issue Share Guide. The others are coyly
described as 'under 10,000'. David Nutt of Stonehart Publications claims 8,000
fully paid subscribers for Stockmarket Confidential, with another 4,000 on the free trial offer.